


light my heart and light my shadow

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [21]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, F/M, Haunted Houses, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:55:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: “And what happened the night you told me about? Why do you want to go back to Ravenpoint?”“On November 14th 2004, when I was ten years old, I woke up alone in my room. My entire family were dead. The police closed the case less than six months later. Their only witness was a traumatised child, and there seemed to be no evidence of foul play.”“And what questions do we hope to answer in Ravenpoint?”“I want to find out what happened to my family. What monsters come out after dark.”
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	light my heart and light my shadow

**A/N:** AU-dvent day 11! Based in the Monster Hunters AU prompt from AU-gust, and also me trying my hand at writing something a little creepy. I hope I did it justice.

The name of Vision's podcast is inspired by the quotes 'Never pray to the gods that answer after dark' from _The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue_ by V. E. Schwab.

Formatting notes: podcast commentary is in _italics_ , and moments of the recording that are not included in the published podcast are _[written like this]_.

I'm on Tumblr and Twitter **@mximoffromanoff** if anybody wants to chat about all things scarletvision! Enjoy, and please let me know with a comment if you do :)

**warning: horror elements, possession, mentions of murder and suicide**

* * *

_"Hello, and welcome back to The Answer After Dark. I am your host, Victor Shade, and this week I begin a new multi-episode arc of this podcast. Now, I know I normally give each location only a week, but when you all hear the history of my current investigation, you will understand why I want to devote multiple episodes to this."_

The manor looms dark against the horizon, rising elegantly from the crest of the hill and the trees shifting in the wind, and when he glances to the passenger seat he sees Wanda twitching, something of her facade cracking. She's been silent since they left the calm warmth of the bed and breakfast in the last village, and now her thin fingers with their anxiously bitten nails are curling into fists. And he softly says, "There's still time to turn back, Ms. Maximoff. I can find another investigation. The world is rich with ghost stories."

"No," she says softly, and her eyes flash with the fierce metal he saw when they first met in the café. The ferocity that makes his chest flip. "I have to face this. I've been running from it for far too long."

"Perhaps we could start some of the interview material as soon as we get there," he says, and she nods, still stiff in her seat. "Take a few photos, if you feel ready. If you still want your story to be out there."

"I need this," she says softly, and he stares straight ahead at the shadows of the road that slope upwards into the pointed trees, their long thin branches eerily like fingers in the night. He stares away from the woman in the car next to him, the woman who draws his attention to her like a moth to the flame, with her pinched face and haunted eyes.

" _For this investigation, I will have a co-host. And since we will be spending a few weeks together, I want to introduce her to all of you and allow her to give some history of the manor we are investigating."_

" _Thank you for having me, Victor. For your audience, I'm Wanda. I reached out to Victor after hearing his investigative podcasts to join me in investigating Ravenpoint Manor. It's an old manor on the outskirts of a tiny town most of you have probably never heard of called Farnfoss. My family moved there when I was five."_

" _And why are we investigating Ravenpoint, Ms. Maximoff?"_

_["Because...I..."_

" _It's alright, Wanda. I can explain to them-"_

" _No...no, I have to."]_

" _There were local stories about Ravenpoint for many years. It was built in the 1840s by William Berkshire for his much younger wife. He lived there alone within two years, and no one ever found out what happened to her wife. She is unnamed in history. Some believe she died in childbirth, some believe she ran off with a local butcher, and some believe her husband found out about her indiscretions before she could run and murdered her. Regardless, less than a year later, so less than five years after the house had been completed, William hung himself. His body was found by someone hunting pheasants with their dog in the woods."_

" _And what happened after William Berkshire, Ms. Maximoff?"_

" _Ravenpoint has been inconsistently occupied since then. There are too many local superstitions about the place for anyone to go near it. Stories about misty figures in the grounds, lights turning on in the upstairs windows, and whispers whenever anyone strays too far through the woods around the manor. But my father saw the price, and all he could think of was raising his family in such a beautiful place."_

" _You were five when your family moved in?"_

" _Yes. My father, my mother, my twin brother and me. And for a while, we were...we were very happy here."_

" _Were you?"_

" _Well...aside from vivid nightmares. But I was a child. I thought any child living in an old manor the local children kept telling her was haunted would have nightmares."_

" _And what happened the night you told me about? Why do you want to go back to Ravenpoint?"_

" _On November 14th 2004, when I was ten years old, I woke up alone in my room. My entire family were dead, and I was the one who found their bodies. I ran down the road screaming until a woman out for a drive found me and took me to the village. The police closed the case less than six months later. Their only witness was a traumatised child, and there seemed to be no evidence of foul play."_

" _And what questions do we hope to answer in Ravenpoint?"_

" _I want to find out what happened to my family. What monsters come out after dark."_

He has only to step one foot over the threshold of Ravenpoint Manor to feel the chill of foreboding that lingers like fog around the haunted places of the world. The black turtleneck he chose does little to protect him against the chill of the abandoned place, and he wonders after Wanda in her black dress, looking around the wall and so pale she's almost grey, a shadow in the place. And he says, "We can still leave."

She looks around the room, the high ceilings, the dust of years left abandoned clinging to the walls, the staircase that sweeps up into darkness. And she crosses to the dark wood-panelled wall and flicks a light switch, and when the warm chandeliers illuminate the room it seems less terrifying. Just a stately manor, long past its best days. Less atmospheric, but it does calm some of the itching like he's being watched creeping on the back of Vision's neck.

"I can do this," she says, and he doesn't know whether she's trying to convince herself or him. "I can find out what happened that night. I...I owe it to my family to figure out what killed them."

"I'm here," he says, the reassurance he always seems to give the people who ask him to investigate places from their pasts. But he has never meant it like he does with Wanda, with someone he is so inexplicably, instantaneously drawn to. Something about her sad eyes and the hollows of her cheeks and the shadows that dance in her words make him want to burn himself on her fire. "You'll be safe."

"How can you be sure?" she asks, and he just tenses his mouth in a hard line.

"I can't," he says softly. "But I always say that you have to keep out the monsters yourself. You have to stop yourself believing they're there, even when you know they are."

"What if the monsters have followed you your whole life?" she asks, and he wants to take her in his arms. Fold her into him, light her up with warmth.

But he settles for a reassuring smile and a gentle, "The monsters won't get past me. I've investigated them for years, and they don't scare me anymore."

"Then you're lucky," she says, her voice swollen with bitterness and anger and sadness.

* * *

" _If you will, Ms. Maximoff, please describe your experiences in Ravenpoint Manor as a child."_

" _Certainly. Even from the minute we moved in, I always felt like there was something here. The first night, I thought I saw someone in the grounds when I closed my curtains. But I thought it was my father, hiding his cigarette from my mother - she never liked him smoking. I convinced myself of that before I went to sleep every night. Every time I saw that shadow."_

" _Did you see it every night?"_

" _Most nights. And even on the nights I didn't, I still felt...watched. My brother made fun of me for still sleeping with a nightlight. I only stopped because the shadows looked like they were moving and I wanted total darkness."_

" _You talked about nightmares before. Were they frequent nightmares?"_

" _Every night."_

" _What happened in these nightmares?"_

" _I would be lost alone in the dark. I'd call out for my family and no one would answer. And I'd see red eyes in the darkness, glowing at me, and I'd hear someone whispering my name. Like they were right next to me, breathing in my ear. It always felt real, but when I woke up there was never anyone there."_

" _Did you share these nightmares with your family?"_

" _I tried to. But they never felt the same way I did. They just thought I was listening to the locals too much, getting myself caught up in thinking their ghost stories were true. Not much to do in a town this tiny except tell stories about the abandoned house on the hill."_

" _Do you think the stories are true?"_

" _I lived here. Of course I do."_

" _What monsters do you think are in Ravenpoint?"_

" _I don't know. But whatever they are, they don't want anyone else here."_

_["We have to leave, we have to leave, we have to leave-"_

" _It's alright, Wanda. It's late, you had a nightmare. I shouldn't have pushed you to talk right now-"_

" _They remember my name."]_

The kitchen door seems to swing open as he approaches, and he barely notices it. He's gotten used to the strange qualities of the manor, the way it seems to breathe at night, the walls sagging in relief at the fall of night, objects moving seemingly without provocation. The longer he stays, the easier it becomes to push the strangeness aside and set his mind to analysing what's beneath the simply strange. What could be malevolent. The presence he can feel, curling sinuously as a snake beneath the hum of the every day, the presence that frightens Wanda so badly he'll find her in the corridors come morning, having wandered the manor all night she's so frightened to fall asleep.

"They can see me when I sleep," she told him, her eyes sunken and ringed with shadows in her pale face, her thin fingers trembling while she fretfully wrapped her scarf around and around them. "They can touch me. Whisper things. I feel them in the dark…their hands…" He shudders at the memory, remembering the terror in her hushed voice.

She's fragile. Her frightened eyes like emeralds in the bone-white of her face, a star-scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the way she shakes every time she speaks. How she tries to be brave but every new day makes her more afraid, every time he pins a microphone to her chest bringing less usable interview, more of her voice utterly terrified while he desperately tries to comfort her. She's unravelling, a dropped stitch, crumbling in the walls of Ravenpoint.

Every time he lays eyes on her, protective instinct rears up in his chest, wanting to shield this broken beauty from the world. Spirit her away from the manor that seems to leech the life from her, and make her safe. Somewhere far away, warm and sunny, where he could watch her grow golden and happy, the gauntness fade from her face, make her eyes shine again. A fantasy of them.

He's never become emotionally invested before. Never allowed himself to, even though there have been people who eyed him in ways that made it clear they were attracted to him, people who have asked him for drinks or dinner when he finishes the podcast episode based in their home. No one has ever moved him the way Wanda does.

She sings when she's in the kitchen, and he watches her from the doorway. Dark jeans cling to her long, slim legs, her shoulders pale rising out of the neckline of her red jumper, her hair pulled back in two long braids tied off with scraps of ribbon, one red and one blue, and he can't help smiling. Her song is Sokovian, but the melody is haunting and beautiful, her voice clear and sweet, wavering on the high notes, and he wants to listen.

"What are you making?" he asks when she finishes a song, and she glances back at him over her shoulder and gives the softest kind of smile. Her cheeks are slightly pink from the warmth of the oven, making her freckles look less disturbingly like drops of blood against her usual pallor, loose strands of hair damp and curling around her pretty face, and she gives him the softest kind of smile. The smile that makes the ground lurch beneath him.

"Apple pie," she says sweetly, and he sees the smudge of flour on the side of her nose, small as her fingerprint. It's sweet. "I thought maybe...I would be less scared if I start acting like I've always been here. And I wanted to do something for you."

"Nonsense, I'm here to help you, you shouldn't feel put out," he says, and she just leans over to slide the pastry into the oven. "Is there anything I can help with?"

"You can sample the filling, see if it's right," she says, dusting her hands over her sides. "Since you're English and the expert on pie."

The bowl of the green-gold filling is waiting atop the stove, and he crosses to it, trails a finger through the filling and tries to ignore the thudding of his heart at Wanda's eager eyes on him. The filling is sweet and spicy, comforting, and he gives her a smile. "Delicious."

"Let me see that," she says when he swipes a finger for another taste, and her hand closes around his, her fingers very cold and her grip strong. His stomach swoops when she glances up at him from beneath her lashes, and closes her lips softly around his finger, her tongue hot against his skin, and he's speechless, staring down at her while his blood boils.

She pulls off with a soft kiss to his fingertip, licking her lips, and he swallows thickly and says a strangled, "Wanda-"

"I didn't get enough of a taste," she breathes, and her arms wind around his neck to pull her onto her tiptoes and bring their mouths together. They collide, violently, and she pushes her tongue past his lips, and he doesn't resist, everything in him singing in relief that he no longer has to hide how he feels. Her hand rakes through his hair, grasps a handful and pulls, and he rasps out a groan against her lips, pulling her closer.

He can feel her smile against his mouth, and kisses her back eagerly, tasting the sweet-sharp tang of apples on her lips, her breath stuttering. The hand not in his hair is trailing down his chest, finger swirling around the buttons of his shirt, a thousand nerve endings alive with electricity everywhere she touches. He can't remember the last time he wanted like this, like an ache, a bruise on his mind, wanted so badly that he fantasised nightly about the gentle curve of someone's neck. Where he buries his mouth in her soft, warm skin, slipping his hands beneath the hem of her shirt and dancing his fingertips over her ribs, feeling her shudder.

One last kiss against her jaw and he stops, breathes against her sweet skin, his hands settling around her waist. "We should slow down," he breathes. "I just…when I'm close to you, it…it's like a spell, I just want you, all of you…I can't help it…I can't stop."

She grips his hair tighter, pulls his head upright, and he's staring at her shiny, kiss-swollen lips when she breathes, "Then don't stop." And kisses him again, and her hand is moving downwards, opening the buttons of his shirt, her fingers on his skin, tracing swirls into his chest, and he's gone. Utterly gone for her.

Gone on the way she kisses, almost violent in her passion, like she's drowning and he's oxygen. Like they're the last two people in the world. Like she's been aching for him the way he's been aching for her, and when he dips his head to kiss her neck, to trace his lips over the hard line of her collarbones, she tips her head back and moans, and her hands on his chest constrict and carve scratches down his chest. Lines of red quickly fading to vivid white, one weeping a drop of blood, and she grabs him and pulls him out of the kitchen. They never stop kissing.

They tumble onto the couch in a mess of limbs, her on top of him, and she's so beautiful with her eyes closed, her head tipped back and her mouth open in wonder as he traces his hands over her flat stomach, over her sharp ribs, finding the lace of her bra and her skin so warm and soft. His hands curving over her breasts when she leans down and kisses him frenziedly, her teeth on his lip, tugging and pulling a groan up from somewhere deep in his chest. "I've always wanted this," he confesses softly, her mouth on his neck and chest, biting and making his hips jerk in want. "From the moment we met. You were so beautiful…and so sad…and I wanted to make you safe."

"I wanted to _fuck_ you," she whispers against his ribs, and he groans, long and low. "I wanted to pull you apart and put you back together…use you…my little toy…"

"What?" He blinks, the cloud of lust fading, and she glances up at him from where she's kissing his stomach and smiles. A chilling smile, unfurling like a snake, a gash across her face, and her eyes are red.

She kisses him before he can scream, her tongue forcing past his lips, but she jerks back before he can bite, one hand pulling his wrists together and slamming them down against the arm of the couch. She's strong. Stronger than she should be. Her weight feels leaden on top of him, and when she speaks there's a hissing beneath her words, something cruel. "Stupid boy," she says, her eyes glowing like hot coals, so bright he can barely stand to look at them. "Didn't your mama ever teach you not to be taken in by a pretty face?"

A hand behind her back, and she draws a knife from her waistband, a sinister gleaming in her eyes, satisfaction in the ghastly curl of her smile. Puts the tip of the blade to his chest, her fingers curled around the handle with the confidence of familiarity, the edge of it gleaming wickedly sharp, and she smiles - or it smiles, the thing using Wanda's face - when he screams. "Don't, please, _don't_ , let me go, Wanda-"

"Wanda isn't here," the thing whispers with Wanda's sweet lips, and curls its hand around the knife.

With an enormous effort, he twists his hips and knocks it off-balance, grabs for the blade, shrieking as it carves a harsh line into his palm but managing to turn it away from his chest. It skitters away across the floor, and the thing scrambles for it, letting him sit up and tumble himself behind the couch seconds before the knife buries itself in the cushion where his hand was.

Blood is streaming over his fingers, he can't feel his hand, but he tries to keep his voice strong, not to faint in horror when he hears the sing-song, "Vizh! Come out! I want you to make me safe!"

"Let her go!" he snarls, and he lifts his head over the couch to find the terrible red eyes staring at him, a silky smirk on the lips he's wanted to taste for so long.

"But she's such fun to play with," comes the reply, hissing and dangerous and _evil_. Fingers turning the knife over, slick with his blood, idly. Almost lazy. "She breaks so easily. She lets us in. All of us. Doesn't care who has her."

"Get out of her," he snaps. "She's sweet and kind and scared. Leave her be."

It tilts its head at him in consideration, the knife in its hand. "I like you," it says. "You're fun. We haven't had an outsider in so long." It giggles, an awful sound, and says, "You're going to be so much fun to break."

A wind rips through the room, and the red fades from Wanda's eyes. She staggers, blinks, and then looks at him. At the blood filling his hand, streaming over his fingers to stain the couch and his clothes, and she screams and drops the knife in her hand.

"Please, Wanda, don't be frightened," he says, keeping his voice so soft, like he's speaking to a scared animal. "It's alright. _You're_ alright. Just breathe."

"I'm sorry," she chokes out, her eyes bright with tears, fear written in every inch of her face. "I'm sorry, I…don't come near me, just leave, you should leave, please _go_!"

She flees, and he's left staring at the wound in his hand, alone with a knife and the ghost of her kisses on his lips.

* * *

" _Welcome back to The Answer After Dark. I am your host, Victor Shade. Unfortunately, Ms. Maximoff is unable to guest on the podcast this week. She isn't feeling well. So I will be hosting this week alone, and telling you a little more about my experience so far in Ravenpoint Manor."_

He doesn't know how she's hidden herself away from him in Ravenpoint. He's seen nothing of her but a shadow for days, a flip of hair disappearing around a corner, her boots by the door, a figure in the garden. He buried the knife in the garden, not wanting her to have any reminder, and a shiver still darts down his spine when he thinks about how it reappeared in the kitchen, clean and polished, shining dangerously on the stovetop next to the abandoned bowl of apple pie filling.

The kiss awoke something in him. No matter that it wasn't really Wanda kissing him, that it was something possessing her, it was still her lips on his. He still wakes up in the night with the desperate shadow of her kisses on his lips, his head spinning, clutching the cold sheets in a fist to stop himself climbing out of bed to find her. She hasn't spoken so much as a word to him since she ran from him, and as the wound across his palm knits together into a silvery scar he aches for her in a way much more than physical.

It seems like another night of waking from dreams of hot lips and gentle green eyes, of her slenderness wrapped around him like ivy around a stately home. But something in him whispers to leave the bed rather than try to drift back into disturbed sleep, the floors cold as ice beneath his bare feet. And when he opens the door and sees a figure wreathed in white in the corridor, he almost screams.

But it's Wanda. Wearing a white nightdress, moving along the corridor like walking through a waking dream, and he softly calls her name. But she doesn't look back, the gloom gliding shadows across her, and he follows, calling for her over and over.

She walks up to the top of the staircase, where the wood has rotted away and drops away into darkness and the faraway marble floor of the entrance hall. And he stands at the bottom of the stairs, watching her delicate feet tread the softened wood without falling through, and hisses, "Wanda? What are you doing?"

And she turns back, her eyes glowing red in the gloom. The same scarlet as they showed when she tried to kill him, when something using her hands and her face to trick him made her pull away for fear of hurting him, and he whispers, "No."

"You're too late, lover boy," the thing, the _ghost_ , hisses. "We've been waiting to collect the complete set." A chilling smile unfurling across its face, so horrifying on Wanda's usually sweet face, and it says, "You should never have brought her here. It's your fault we go back in. And when they find her broken body tomorrow, they'll blame you."

" _No_!" he shouts, and lurches up the broken stairs to grab Wanda's hand as the ghost inside her arches her body gracefully back to fall. Her cold fingers almost slip through his, but he _pulls_ , and she comes flying into his arms, knocking both of them back onto the landing as the end of the staircase creaks and groans and crumbles away.

And Wanda wakes up. Green eyes blinking at him, fear clouding the colour, her face blanched and pale, and she's shaking, pushing him away. "You can't touch me," she whispers. "They'll get to you. You can't-"

"I couldn't watch you die," he whispers, and tucks her hair behind her ear, his own fingers trembling for reasons other than fear. "Wanda, it's not your fault. There's a spirit in this manor possessing you. They tried to kill me. They just tried to make you throw yourself off the staircase."

"It would be better if I died," she breathes, and he shakes his head. She moves away from him, and he spins after her, desperate not to lose her in the dark. "Vision, I...I killed my family."

"Wanda-"

"The ghosts showed me," she says softly. "They were the ones who made me forget. But when I came back, they broke me again. They showed me that night. I...I pushed my father off the stairs and he broke his neck. I tied the knot that hung my mother. I took a knife and stabbed my brother and watched him bleed to death while he knew it was me. _I_ did it."

"You didn't, Wanda, the ghost did," he says, and reaches for her hand. Her skin is warm to the touch again, the way he wants her to be, and he pulls her close. "Please, believe me. I have learned so much about who you are just from the way you talk, the way you carry yourself. You would never hurt someone. I don't know why these ghosts want you-"

"I let them in," she whispers, and her eyes are filled with tears. "I'm so afraid they can exploit it. They feed on my fear."

"They made you afraid scratching at the walls when you were a child," he says softly. "That is how malevolent spirits operate. They make you afraid and they open the doors for themselves. It is not your fault."

"Vizh, _please_ ," she breathes, caught in a sob, and his chest lurches to hear that nickname spoken in her true voice, the soft inflection of her accent, the way her sweet lips shape his name. "You're in danger the longer you stay here with me. I don't want you to get tangled up in this."

"I can't leave you now," he says, and reaches to cradle her face in his hand, her eyes glistening with sadness and the quiver of her lip in the dark. "Wanda...you mean something to me. I brought you here to face your demons. Let me help you fight."

"You're going to get hurt," she insists, but she doesn't push him away or run herself. "I'm going to hurt you."

"No hurt could be worse than the agony of not knowing whether you want to kiss me again," he says softly, and she sobs. A raw, broken sound, and then she lurches forward and kisses him. He can feel her warmth through her thin nightgown, and with the wind of the huge empty house whistling around them he pulls her close, into a rare moment where nothing can touch them.

* * *

" _So this feels like a terrible message to leave. And hopefully I will be back next week to end this cliffhanger and tell you what happens tonight. But...in case something happens-"_

" _We are going to attempt to defeat Ravenpoint tonight. I don't know if I'm strong enough to face all the nightmares of my past in one night."_

" _Of course you are-"_

" _If anything happens to us, come to Ravenpoint. Burn it down. Destroy it and everything it has ever stood for."_

"You have to show them you are stronger," he whispers to her. She's dressed in red, bright warrior colours, and they're sitting in her childhood bedroom as the sickly pale sliver of moon rises beyond the window. The room where it all began, where a little girl heard scratching at her walls and started to fear the monsters that came out after dark. "You _are_ strong, Wanda. You can defeat them."

"If you think they're winning, you have to run," she says, and he shakes his head. "Please, Vision. You have to do it for me. Get out of the manor and don't look back. I don't know what they might make me capable of."

"I'm not leaving you," he insists, and folds her warm hands into his. "You are everything I never expected to find, Wanda. I'm not afraid of you. And I won't let them have you for their collection."

"Don't be an idiot," she says softly. "This isn't a movie. Sometimes the heroes don't win. The monster does."

"I won't let them take you," he says, and leans across the narrow single bed to kiss her. She's warm, the one constant reassurance that the ghosts have not touched her since he pulled her from the stairs and saved her, and she kisses him back, trembling hands cradling his face.

When they part, he moves away from her, closer to the flickering candles that circle the room. And he watches her cross-legged on the bed, so still. He sees the moment that something slips into her, layering itself beneath her skin, and her eyes open burning red, that terrible smile slashing across her face. "Foolish of you, to think you can protect her," it says, and she shifts on the bed. Like the ghost is making itself comfortable in her skin.

"She will protect herself," he says, and there's a chilling laugh to cool the room.

"She has never been able to fight me off," it says, still chillingly smiling. "Ever since she was a child, she's been so easy to break. I wanted to see what I could make her do. My little puppet, so afraid of every shadow. It was so pleasant to make her kill her family, you know. To make her forget until now. You could never understand the joy of watching her wake up and find them dead. Her screams echoing around Ravenpoint. Delicious."

"You feed on her fear," he says, and the ghost smiles. "But she is not afraid of you anymore. If she is brave, you are weak. You're not much of a monster."

"Dear boy, I have lived in this manor since my husband strangled me for my affair," the ghost says, and he starts. "I drove him insane scratching at the walls until he killed himself. I have collected so many toys over the years. She is no different."

"She _is_ ," he insists, and he moves towards Wanda. Despite all the times he promised he wouldn't touch her while the ghost was within her, he cannot watch her be destroyed. "Wanda, listen to me. You're stronger than you know. Fight this."

"You're sweet," the ghost says. "Trying to be her white knight. But I have a lifetime of history with her. You barely have a month." It smiles, and hisses, "What are a few kisses to a childhood shaped by fear?"

"You are her history," he says. "And I...I want to be her future." He leans in close, takes Wanda's cold hands in his, and whispers, "I'm falling in love with you, Wanda. Don't let this take you from me. _Stay with me_."

For a terrible moment, there is silence, and red eyes, and a smile like a gash. And then her hands in his warm, and she blinks away the red back into green, and he's looking into Wanda's face, her perfect eyes and her tremulous smile. " _Vizh_ ," she breathes, and he nods, lacing his fingers tighter into hers. "I...it's gone."

"I told you you could fight it," he says, and leans forward to kiss her.

* * *

" _And so, I'm going to take a hiatus from The Answer After Dark. The Ravenpoint investigation became more intense than I was expecting, and it took a lot out of me. I have my girlfriend's emotional wellbeing to consider. You can follow the podcast or myself on social media for announcements of when I might return, but for now, I will sign off. Stay safe, stay strong, and don't give in to fear."_


End file.
